Demon Bones Read online

  I sent Aisha a snort then fell silent as the director gave the both of us a nod and left the room without another word.

  So much for detailing the extraction plan.

  Chapter 2

  Are you really okay with this examination?” I asked Aisha silently as we hurried after the doctor and Cassie who were up ahead, chatting in low voices.

  “Means nothing. And be quiet. I’m eavesdropping,” replied the queen, her tone brisk though softened by amusement. It annoyed me that she considered me little more than a child to be patronized but maybe her behavior had something to do with being royal.

  Now, as the silence continued, peppered only by the rapid tapping of heels on tile and the whispering rumble of a conversation I just couldn’t make out, I tried to contain my impatience and curiosity.

  I also tried to subdue a bubble of anxiety that Gilfillan had inadvertently sparked. His questioning of Aisha’s true loyalty had wormed its way into my mind, picking at my suspicions and demanding to be analyzed…suspicions I refused to consider.

  Not right now. There were too many things going on.

  Plus I had to try not to think about the queen’s big secret. I understood why she’d protected her son from his potentially destructive future, but it was just a prophecy. That didn’t mean much especially when it’s left up to interpretation in the first instance.

  Like the prophecy with the Ni’amh.

  Back then, people had believed Celeste to be the Ni’amh and only after her investigation did they understand the prophecy referred to five women who join together to form the Ni’amh. That in itself made me wary, especially since Aisha had gone so far as to have someone mess with her son’s powers.

  She’d told me that little tidbit when we first met and we’d not mentioned it again. To be honest, I’d tried not to think about it at all since it always made me feel damned guilty for having to hide it from Saleem.

  Up ahead, Cassie and the doctor slowed their steps and entered a room on the left. Aisha and I followed them inside a hospital room which was pretty standard fare, nothing at all out of the ordinary. The queen moved over to a bed near the window, playing the acquiescent patient.

  Sloane was already swiping a finger across her tablet, her expression neutral—she meant to be all business about this visit. Not that I was convinced the business itself was legit.

  Directors and doctors were beginning to test my limited patience.

  In the meantime, I had to settle for leaning against the wall of the hospital room and waiting as the doctor gave the queen a full physical examination.

  My mind was never far away from Saleem and what he was probably currently going through. The pain that he was suffering—as well as the mental agony he would have to endure—was hard for me to handle.

  And that helplessness could easily make me reckless. I had felt off-balance ever since I’d been zapped by Omega’s shadowmen and then thrown into the ether.

  Being sent to Samuel had been a bonus but the memory of being sucked into some strange plane had remained with me, eating away at my guilt for what he had sacrificed for me.

  The thought that he had died to protect…protect my sister.

  Still, I was hurt and confused as to why Samuel had never confided in me. Was he protecting me? And how exactly was he protecting Ari? Because as far as I could see, he certainly wasn’t protecting himself.

  He’d put himself in danger the entire time that he had been traveling outside his body, and I had to wonder whether he really understood the kind of danger he’d put himself in.

  Because in the end…he’d been murdered.

  He hadn’t withered away as I had expected him to. Instead, someone had snuck into his room and injected him with a deadly, and as yet unidentified poison.

  A poison which Ash was still meant to come back to me on. So many things had happened in the last weeks that I’d pushed the blood screenings to the back of my mind. Pushed it so far that I’d almost forgotten about them.

  Amazing how the mind can work to hide away the things that hurt the most.

  I needed to test my access to Samuel’s plane again and planned to as soon as I finished up with this Saleem business. I’d tried a few times before Samuel had shut me out, but I’d had no success. And Samuel’s last words still rang in my head.

  You are not ready.

  What in the world could that possibly mean? Was my power not strong enough to deal with him or to enter his manufactured plane? Or did his words have more to do with my sister? My stomach still twinged every time I thought about that meeting with her, the way she had looked at Samuel, the expression on her face when she had studied me.

  My mind was filled with questions and I had to wonder if Ari had known who I was? From Samuel’s behavior, it hadn’t appeared to be so. Maybe it was just my emotional reaction to having seen my baby sister for the first time since she’d been taken, my reaction to realizing she was no longer a little girl needing comfort and care, but rather a fully grown woman capable of manipulation.

  Still, a part of me had to wonder whether what I was feeling within my gut was really the fact that I hadn’t liked her all that much. Just one meeting probably wasn’t enough to define our relationship—such that it was—but had she been some other woman with whom I’d crossed paths, I would likely have decided in that instant that she was not friend material.

  My instinct had made that decision about my sister. Chloe had often told me that I had the ability to access my psychic powers but I’d never pursued practicing it—other than messing with magical wards courtesy of training from Natasha. But with the astral traveling I did, the ability to read other people’s minds had never seemed necessary. Still, refusing to learn, hadn’t stopped me from trusting my stronger sense of people and their emotions.

  With Ari, it was just her bearing and the way she looked at me, and probably also the way she had interacted with Samuel—had made me extremely uncomfortable.

  Which in turn had elevated my desperation to get Samuel out of whatever hole he’d dug for himself. And this intention was forcing me to admit I was considering my sister as a possible danger to Samuel.

  Ari, a danger?

  Just thinking about it made me feel sick to my stomach.

  I shifted against the walls at my back and a quick glance over at the doctor and her patient gave me the sense that they were nearly done. Across from me on the other side of the room was Cassandra. The ShapeChanger was an ally but there had been some friction back at Natasha’s house between her and the albino demon overlord Baa’ruk.

  I had to ensure that friction was not going to be a problem on the mission. Much like the issues between Drake and Nerina—I’d discussed my concerns with them but I could sense the tension whenever the pair were in the same room.

  Thankfully, those instances hadn’t been many as Drake had kept busy with first aid- and weapons-procurement while Nerina had been caught up in a whirlwind struggle within the DeathTalker priesthood. She’d been light on the details, but had assured me that she was still part of the team, and had made me promise not to leave without her.

  Why did I have to have a million things going on at the same time when all I wanted was to figure out what was wrong between my friends and fix it? I wanted to pull it apart and find out the cause and help them work through it—praying all the time that I wouldn’t discover that they were really part of a racially-charged hatred that went back thousands of years.

  The problem with the supernatural races was that so much of their inter-species hatred could be traced back for many millennia. So far, the supernatural world elected to spend much of their time in the EarthWorld and tended to get along well enough with each other. In my experience, the humans were more likely to instigate friction between the races than the supernaturals themselves.

  Cassandra sent me a weak smile, just the tiniest twitch of her lips. Her reticence within the Sentinel building put me on edge, though I did understand. Was the agency keeping vit
al information from us? Or was she merely wanting to keep her professional distance in order for the team to maintain an inside link to Sentinel and the backup they were meant to provide?

  Now, I pushed off against the wall and walked closer toward the bed. “What exactly have you been testing for, Dr. Sloane? For all we know, Sentinel has another agenda here and we’re just pawns the agency is pushing around.”

  Something their lack of cooperation was beginning to confirm to me.

  Sloane’s eyes narrowed as she gave me a contemplative look. In my experience, that was the kind of look a doctor gives to someone who is not related to the patient when they are asking questions they have no right to—as if to say ‘You are not family so I’m not going to discuss anything personal with you.’

  But, to her credit, she nodded, glanced over at Aisha as though to ask for permission, then said, “Rest assured, there is nothing untoward in terms of our intentions. We want to be sure that Queen Aisha’s health was not debilitated in any way. I need to exclude poisoning or drugging, and then confirm there is no physical or mental damage. No telling what Omega may have been including in her food and drink during the time she spent in captivity. All we want is to ensure that the queen returns to her realm in peak physical condition.”

  And was that it?

  Was Sentinel merely attempting to ensure they delivered the queen to her people in the best condition possible?

  Perhaps they really were looking for poisons in her bloodstream—which is something that we had also considered—but everyone has their own political agendas, and I just didn’t trust Sentinel.

  Something else was up with their involvement in the mission to rescue Saleem. I was beginning to suspect that Sentinel was eyeing out control of the djinn realm themselves and wanted it.

  I wasn’t sure they’d be that daring considering the Supreme High Council would have something to say about that.

  But then again, Sentinel was an intelligence agency, able to navigate beyond the eyes of the SHC, and with such espionage skills they could easily hide their progress and intentions.

  Was it possible that Sentinel believed that they could save Saleem and rescue Mithras, only to have the power over the new energy sources turned over to them? To turn over the control of the djinn realm from Omega and Division 7 to Sentinel? But that was not going to happen.

  Not on my watch.

  Chapter 3

  Gilfillan’s admission that his team was having difficulty obtaining maps and details of Mithras and its cities, didn’t sit well with me. I understood the inability to do recon in preparation for a mission put us all in a dangerous position, one that could possibly compromise the entire mission, along with the safety of the team.

  I was so desperate that, in that moment, I decided to try something I’d learned of a long time ago. I’d heard it was possible, and even Samuel had said that he’d given it a try once, but it had always been spoken of in hushed and amused tones, the way one spoke of an alchemist’s claim that they’d succeeded in turning water into gold.

  Until now, I’d never given it a passing thought, having never been in a position to require such a desperate measure before now.

  The act of leaving a message in the ether was said to be something regarded as myth and fable. The few people I’d discussed it with previously, when I’d spent a week or two obsessed with the possibility, had insisted that it was not possible. Only Samuel had proven it was when he’d left a message for me at the Aurora Borealis. But I’d never done it before and with zero experience hopefully I didn’t explode the astral plane. Still, at this point I would try just about anything.

  I didn’t want to test fate by trying to contact Saleem and alerting Division 7 of my presence. So, if it was possible to get an ethereal message to an astral-traveling djinn like Saleem—and apparently it was since I’d received Samuel’s message not all that long ago—then surely, he could somehow get his hands on the vital details that we needed which Sentinel had thus far failed to locate. He could be able to find us maps, or at least draw them from his own knowledge.

  Hopefully.

  I also took a moment to admit that if this actually did work, I was going to kick myself for not having tried it already.

  Entering the astral plane, I immersed myself within the stream’s energy within the ether. I drew a long slow breath and reached out along the astral plane lines in the same way I did when I was searching for a life-thread, because in essence I had to locate a person first in order to successfully send my message.

  My familiarity with Saleem’s thread helped and I swiftly located and honed in on his life-essence. Even so, relief flooded my veins as I held onto the vibrating thread and focused, convincing myself that this was not unlike sending someone a text message—I’d accessed Saleem’s life-thread and now, all I needed to do was to record my message.

  And hopefully the energies of the astral plane would do the rest of the job and deliver it for me.

  Whether Saleem would get the message, whether he would be able to act on it, was anyone’s guess. For all I knew, centuries ago, some joker had come up with this idea as a really bad April Fool’s joke.

  Oh, wait. Maybe not, since Samuel had proven it was well and truly possible for a high-level SoulTracker, and considering I was supposed to be the strongest alive right now, the ethereal messaging system was no joke.

  I focused my thoughts and began to think the words of my message.

  Saleem, you have to help us. We’re having a really hard time getting a hold of maps to Kamsin. Details on security are also very sparse. Without recon, preparing for the mission has been nearly impossible. Is there any way you could locate a map of Kamsin? Maybe of the nearby cities that could be in danger? Any other details you think might be relevant or helpful would be good as well. I don’t know if this is going to work but I sure hope so because you are the only chance we have of getting safely into the city, and into the palace itself.

  I closed off the message with a burst of emotion, aware that when he received it, he would be infused with the deepest of my emotions. But I didn’t care. It was about bloody time the guy knew how much he meant to me.

  After leaving the message, I floated in the ether for a moment, a part of me reluctant to leave, wondering if I’d done it right, wondering if I was fooling myself.

  At last, with a silent grunt, I forced myself to transition back through the Veil and return to my body. As I sank into my physical form, I became aware of two things—one, Aisha was looking at me with a strange expression, and two, that my fingers were still crossed behind my back. I suppressed a smile and hoped that it had boosted my luck.

  I’d make do with whatever I could get.

  I refocused on Cassie and then Sloane, who was wrapping up her physical examination of the queen and straightening. She glanced up and met my gaze, her own clear and seemingly open. Her apparent lack of guile had me questioning my suspicions altogether.

  She gave a brief nod as she shut off her tablet. “I’m done for now, but I believe we were to have another set of tests done before your departure to Mithras.”

  Aisha got to her feet, eyes narrowing as she asked, “Is that really necessary?”

  Sloane met the queen’s eyes and from the hard expression in her face I knew even the might of the djinn queen wouldn’t wrangle the truth from the doctor.

  Aisha had either read my thoughts, or come to the same conclusion as I had, because when she received no answer, she turned a deliberate gaze toward me, as though requesting I fix the problem. I sighed and straightened really wishing I could get the hell out of the building.

  Pasting on a neutral smile I said, “You can feel free to email us with details if you need to perform further testing. Queen Aisha will consider their necessity at the time. And would you be so kind as to forward a copy of all the medical results to me. For Her Majesty’s perusal, of course.” The doctor’s eyebrows lifted and this time Aisha also glanced at me, a little curious tilt to her h
ead. I gave a small shrug, and said, “Just wanting to be sure that everything is above board. I’ll have our team’s doctor have a look at it just to make sure that you guys have covered all the required medical tests. Will it be ok to get in touch with you if he suggests any further testing?”

  The doctor’s shoulders relaxed and she gave a small nod, her features slipping back into neutrality. But the queen’s eyes narrowed as she looked at me and said silently, “What are you up to?”

  “Nothing. I just wanted to make it clear that we are entitled to know what they are testing for. Or at least to let them know we’re not dumb enough to take their explanations at face-value. They’re raising too many red flags and I won’t trust them one bit until I can be sure. And even then, I’d be keeping an eye on them every second.”

  “And I take it Chloe is this doctor you’re talking about?”

  “Actually, no. It’s Drake. But Chloe will definitely give us a second opinion. And if there is something, I’m pretty sure she will find it.”

  During our silent conversation, Sloane’s gaze had remained on her tablet—sending off her requests to her superiors?—though there was no guarantee.

  Now, she looked up from her tablet and met my gaze. “I’ve given my authorization for copies of the results to be sent to you. Let me know if you have any questions.” Then, with a nod to Cassie and the queen, the doctor left the hospital room without a backward glance.

  In the silence of her departure, Cassie and I shared a look, but when I opened my mouth, she gave a slight shake of her head and said, “So, I guess we’ve taken enough of your time. I’m sorry but I have to run; I have another case to attend to and then later this afternoon I will be touching base again with the director. Rest assured, we will be passing on any relevant information regarding the mission.”